When assessing the probability of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, analysts tend to focus on a few obvious risks that China would face—namely, military defeat, economic slowdown, and restricted oil and technology imports. All of these are important, but an equally significant vulnerability is often left off the list: China’s reliance on soybean imports.
Beijing recognizes this liability. At the 20th Party Congress, in 2022, Chinese leader Xi Jinping identified “ensuring the security of food, energy resources, and critical industrial supply chains” as issues essential to national security and social stability. Food security, conspicuously listed first, is an especially sensitive issue for China’s 1.4 billion inhabitants: roughly 15 percent of the country’s population today was alive during the 1959–61 famine, which resulted in an estimated 30 million deaths.
As with technology and oil, Beijing has tried to limit its dependence on soybeans by building up stockpiles and diversifying its sources. But because soybeans are a fragile foodstuff, there is only so much China can do. Beijing can support a war effort, therefore, for only as long as the Chinese public could put the People’s Liberation Army’s success above its nutritional needs. And the key for deterring Chinese leaders from starting a conflict is to convince them that a domestic crisis would arrive sooner than any battlefield victory.
NO OTHER CHOICE
Disruption to critical imports is one of the most powerful deterrents to China’s use of force, and it’s a threat that the Chinese government has spent decades working to counter. The specter of a foreign blockade in the Strait of Malacca, through which most of Chinese oil imports pass, has worried Chinese leaders since at least 2003, when Chinese leader Hu Jintao warned about the risk of major powers’ interference creating a “Malacca dilemma” for China’s energy security. Beijing, however, has stockpiled massive reserves of oil, which it could complement in a crisis by increasing imports of Russian oil and, as Moscow has done, building up a sanctions-evading shadow fleet to transport oil from the Middle East.
Access to foreign technology is a newer but just as important concern, and China is similarly stockpiling critical components, such as chips. It is also having success in developing local alternatives. Beijing has already pulled ahead in some sectors, such as solar and battery manufacturing, or it is working to close the gap in others, as in semiconductors.
But Beijing has fewer options when it comes to self-sufficiency in food. Domestic production of staple grains—such as wheat, rice, and corn—accounts for more than 90 percent of consumption in these categories, but China remains dependent on foreign producers for other important foodstuffs, including soybeans, beef, and barley. Between 2000 and 2020, the share of China’s food supply provided by imports grew from six percent to 34 percent, and analysts predict it to increase to 41 percent by 2030. Part of this growth comes from the country’s economic development; as people become wealthier, their diets diversify, and they are no longer satisfied eating only grains. Between 1962 and 2024, meat as a percentage of the typical Chinese diet increased by a factor of 18.
This is where the central role of soybeans comes in. The legume provides a complex array of proteins in animal feed that other food sources and synthetic amino acids cannot replicate. Without it, livestock herds in China would shrink, thereby threatening domestic meat and dairy supplies. Soybean oil is also the most used cooking oil in China, making up nearly half the market. Alternatives, such as palm and rapeseed oils, are also mostly imported and face the same risks of maritime disruption, offering little relief.
Chinese soybean stockpiles might be able to last only a few months.
China has invested a great deal in securing and, when possible, diversifying its access to foreign food sources. In 2013, a Chinese company bought Smithfield Foods, the United States’ largest pork producer. And state-owned enterprises such as COFCO International, a branch of China’s largest food and agriculture company, are buying farms and building logistical infrastructure in major agriculture-producing countries, such as Argentina and Brazil, which allows them to buy directly from farmers. Such direct investments provide a buffer against price volatility, giving Beijing more control over the volume and cost of supplies at their source. China has also steadily increased its own domestic meat production, which accounts for more than 90 percent of China’s demand. But such efforts do little to mitigate the effects of disruptions in maritime shipping—especially of soybeans, which is a supply chain that is fragile even in peacetime.
The central rub is that China has no choice but to import its soybeans. There is not enough arable land in China to both expand soybean cultivation and sustain self-reliance in staple grains. (Soybeans are also a much less efficient crop than corn or wheat in China’s arid north, making this tradeoff the economical choice.) But the countries that grow and export soybeans are almost all in the Western Hemisphere, which presents even more logistical challenges. When the trade war between the United States and China broke out in 2018, for instance, Beijing limited its U.S. soybean imports from 40 percent to about 20 percent of its supply, making up the difference with increased imports from Brazil. But Brazil’s poor infrastructure and frequent natural disasters make its harvest more susceptible to failure than the U.S. harvest. In 2024, one Brazilian state lost a quarter to a third of its soybean harvest because of flooding.
U.S. and Brazilian ports are also about as far from China as they could be. Brazil’s Santos port, for example, is more than 10,000 miles from Guangzhou, which takes 45 days to ship. Because of soybeans’ sensitivity to humidity, this distance means that ships often arrive in China with rotten cargo. For similar reasons, the legume is also difficult to stockpile. Unlike rice and wheat reserves, which Beijing claims could last for years, soybean reserves are smaller and must be replaced more frequently. Chinese stockpiles might be able to last only a few months if its imports were cut off. Although China has been experimenting with bioengineered supplements in an effort to reduce the amount of soybeans in animal feed, rising food demand is offsetting any gains. In other words, its dependence on soybean imports is only continuing to grow.
AGAINST THE CLOCK
The outbreak of war between China and the United States would pose existential threats to this supply chain. In the most extreme scenario, the U.S. military could block shipments from the Western Hemisphere to China, which would take away most of the country’s soybean imports. China has no naval bases or forward forces in Latin America that could counter these efforts.
But China’s food supply chains would suffer from disruption even without a U.S. embargo or blockade. Any war in the Pacific would bring with it massive risk premiums for maritime shipment insurance that might cause shipping firms to balk. Such an effect has already been on display for shipping in the Red Sea, where Houthi missile threats have caused insurance costs to skyrocket since 2024. A war in the Pacific could be far more intense and costly because it would involve major navies, and ships could not route around the danger zone, making the long-haul journey from Brazil financially ruinous for many companies.
Beijing could, in theory, offer sovereign guarantees to offset firms’ insurance premiums. Even then, the firms transporting soybeans, most of which are owned by U.S. and allied country parties, might cease transporting products to China to avoid abetting a hostile regime, to steer clear of dangers that would put their employees at risk, and to head off possible future exposure to sanctions for doing business with the country.
The fragilities of China’s food system are endemic.
Chinese analysts believe that China could circumvent some of these risks by using its own commercial fleet. Although this fleet has impressive capacity during peacetime—the Chinese shipping giant COSCO owns 468 dry bulk carriers—in wartime it would be stretched thin, facing demands to help move construction materials, industrial supplies, and foodstuffs for the People’s Liberation Army and to transport critical military materials such as coal and iron ore. Even available ships would likely lack personnel with the training needed to keep soybeans fresh during the long journey. And if ships tried to avoid the most dangerous sea-lanes, trips could take even longer, surpassing the 40 days that soybeans can be safely stored. Cargo might arrive rotten, if it arrived at all.
A war in the Pacific would not trigger an immediate food crisis in China. In the shorter term, the government could manage reduced imports by releasing supplies of soybeans, frozen pork, and other staples from state reserves. It could also reduce the minimum soybean inclusion rates for animal feed, which would slow livestock growth and cut meat output but which would be workable for a time. A few months of a managed crunch, however, is a best-case scenario. More likely is that panic buying and shipping disruptions would drain reserves faster than planned, turning a manageable shortfall into rising prices and visible shortages within months.
There is reason to believe, for instance, that Chinese stockpiles might not provide the short-term security they purport to. Over the last decade, local government warehouses meant to store emergency food supplies have been found empty or filled with rotten supplies, largely because of corruption. This not only calls into question how much extra food China truly has but also undermines public confidence in the government. In the case of a conflict, citizens conscious of the long-term disruption to come would begin panic buying and hoarding supplies. Whatever reserves do exist would eventually run out, with members of the elite likely being prioritized.
If the conflict dragged on, the situation would become increasingly dire. Agricultural producers, especially small farms, would be forced to cull their herds. Poultry, which requires especially high soybean content in its feed, would be the first casualty, which would then threaten the egg supply. Pork would be next. Cooking oils would grow scarce and expensive, making it difficult for restaurants and households to function. Eventually, public patience would wear thin: hoarding, protests over prices and shortages, and local officials diverting supplies could put mounting pressure on Beijing to end the war.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Unlike China’s vulnerabilities in energy or technology, the fragilities of the food system are endemic. If a conflict were to break out in the Pacific, the United States would not need to institute a blockade against China’s agricultural supplies or gather an international coalition to sanction China’s soybean imports. Soaring insurance costs and ship owners’ reluctance to sail into a war zone would be enough to squeeze the flow, and the Chinese government would have little recourse to stop it.
If Chinese leaders believed that they could achieve victory quickly and with few shots fired, they might take the bet. Deterrence, then, will require convincing them that they cannot. The United States, Taiwan, and other governments should invest in drones, rebuild munitions stockpiles, and ramp up messaging to China that a long, drawn-out conflict is likely. As long as China’s leaders believe that a war would be indecisive in its early stages, the threat of domestic crisis would be a powerful reason not to start one.
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